Cub Cadet Repowered With 3-Cyl. Car Engine

Cub Cadet Repowered With 3-Cyl. Car Engine REPOWERED EQUIPMENT Repowered Equipment 30-6-30 Carlo Shefveland and Dale Lemmerman often attend antique tractor and engine shows. Whenever they want to get through a show in a hurry they sometimes take their 1970 Cub Cadet 104 garden tractor, which they repowered with a Geo Metro 3-cyl., 60 hp car engine. Just for looks, one side of the engine is equipped with three motorcycle carburetors to go with the 3-cyl. engine. The other side has three curved exhaust stacks. There's a seat for a passenger behind the driver. It's supported by a single caster wheel that hooks up to the tractor drawbar. The tractor still has its original 3-speed transmission. "We call it our Metro Cadet. We built it because we just thought it would be fun to put a car engine into a Cub Cadet tractor," says Shefveland. "It really gets people's attention. At shows we'll stop to look at something, and by the time we turn around often there will be several people walking around the tractor. "Installing the engine was quite a job. You could fill a book with the stuff we did to make everything work right." They took the tractor apart, sandblasted it, and repainted it. They didn't have to lengthen the tractor frame at all. However, the car engine is much bigger than the original 10 hp one and didn't leave room for the tractor's original steering sector. To solve the problem, they replaced the original steering sector with one out of a 1948 Ford car. The new engine had so much power that it ruptured the seals on the tractor's driveline. To build a new driveline, they used the CV joints off the front wheel drive Metro. However, those CV joints blew apart so they replaced them with U-joints from the steering shaft off an old car. Compared to the original Cub Cadet engine, the car engine ran backward and would have caused the transmission to go too fast backward and too slow forward. To reverse the engine, they removed the original reduction gears from the transmission and replaced them with a chain and sprocket system to the rear wheels so the tractor goes nice and slow. The turbocharged intercooler radiator is off a 1990 Ford car radiator, and the fan is off an old Honda car. The distributor is off a 1963 Chevrolet 6-cyl. car. "The original tractor had a capacitor discharge ignition, but when we installed the car engine there was no longer room for it. We only needed three spark plug points, so we used every other terminal on the distributor," says Shefveland. "It'll probably go 20 to 25 mph. But the steering system is so poor that it wouldn't be safe to go that fast," says Shefveland. "When the driver steps on the accelerator it'll lift the tractor's front end right off the ground. It's a good thing we're not kids anymore or we could get hurt driving it." They made the exhaust mufflers from Midas Muffler pipe, cutting it to fit and bending it. They also installed new gauges on the dash. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Carlo Shefveland, 5807 Lyndale Ave. N., Brooklyn Center, Minn. 55431 ph 763 561-8871) or Dale Lemmerman, 18927 Jewel St., Wyoming, Minn. (ph 763 434-7936).

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